by Barry Napier
Back on the pavement, Katherine took a moment to take it all in. There was no moving traffic. Numerous cars were either overturned or pushed sideways in various positions across the four lanes of the westbound side. She saw two different cars that looked to have been tossed over the concrete divider separating the westbound and eastbound lanes. Roughly fifty yards to her right, she saw where an entire portion of a brick wall had slammed onto the hood of a car.
She heard someone screaming from far away, somewhere far behind her. She nearly started to walk towards it but the looming clouds of dust, smoke and debris from the direction of Richmond’s heart made her think twice. She stared at the cloud for a moment; the mushroom shape had mostly dispersed, but somehow that made it even worse. The explosion had wreaked its havoc, and now it was time for things to settle—time for the fallout and aftermath.
The screaming back in that direction became a shriek and Katherine winced when she made herself start walking forward. She supposed it was simply out of instinct that her hand hovered over her holstered sidearm—a bureau issued Glock 19M. It occurred to her that the stupid thing might have gotten wet while she’d been suspended upside down in the James, but she felt like that might be the least of her concerns.
She started walking forward, trying to piece together some sort of plan. She reached for her phone in her pocket only to remember that she had lost it in the explosion and ensuing accident. She figured even if she did have it, all of the cell towers that would provide her with a signal would have been levelled in the blast. And besides…who was she going to call? Rollins? Maybe the main desk at headquarters in DC?
No phone. No car. No passable roads as of right now. She wondered if it might be better in Brandermill. Certainly the impact of the bomb hadn’t made it that far, had it? And even if it had, the roads would not have been nearly as congested as the parkway. So for now, that was Step One in her plan: make it to Brandermill. After that, she’d figure out the next step.
She walked along the edge of the parkway, doing her best to not allow the boiling emotions inside of her to work their way to the surface. She could feel it tight in her chest as she passed by an overturned truck that had pitched its driver through the windshield. She swallowed down a little cry of disgust when she passed the SUV that had slammed into the side of a beer delivery truck, the driver dead and hunched over the wheel, the teenage passenger’s head cracked open against the windshield.
As she walked, she thought she could hear some sort of pulse running through the world. She wondered if it might be the disturbance in the air or atmosphere caused by the blast. She had no idea. She knew the absolute minimum about how bombs worked, much less nuclear bombs. It was odd, but the noise she was hearing made her think of the panoramic shots she’d seen of Mars, sent back to Earth by the rovers NASA had parked up there. She’d always imagined the desolate sound of wind and absolutely nothing else, tearing across an alien landscape. What she heard was very much like that, only turned down sharply.
It didn’t take long before this peculiar noise was interrupted. A soft cry came from her right. It was very close by; she thought it was coming from the little Honda Accord that had been thrown up onto its side and then hard into the concrete divider between the east and westbound lanes.
“God, please help me,” a woman’s voice said directly behind the cry. She then let out a whimper and, through a little moan, repeated the prayer. “God, please help me.”
Katherine veered away from the edge of the road before she was fully aware of what she was doing. She headed in the direction of the Accord, listening to the poor sounds of the female voice. As she drew closer to the car, Katherine could see the driver. The car had flipped over in a half-turn, the driver’s side window against the ground. But because the windshield had been mostly destroyed, she could still see the driver. The woman looked to be of about middle age. Her blonde hair was streaked in red, and it appeared to be matted to the side of her face.
“Hello?” Katherine said as she came up beside the car. “I’m here. I don’t know if I can help, but I’m here.”
The woman turned towards Katherine and when she did, she let out a cry of pure pain. Her face crumpled into a mask of agony as she let out the words as well as she could. “Left leg…can’t feel it. Head…busted open. I just can’t…oh God, please help.”
“Let’s see what we can do here,” Katherine said, dropping to a knee. She angled herself towards the windshield to get a better look and there was a terrifying moment when she thought she might have to turn her head and throw up.
The driver had been hit in the right side of the head by something during the accident. The entire right side of her face was a mask of red. The skin had been peeled away and Katherine was pretty sure she could see the white of her skull peeking through. Even as Katherine observed this, she saw the blood pumping out in an amount like she had never seen before.
“Can you help?” the woman asked. “I was supposed to get that chili Joe likes and take it back home and…please, God, help…”
The woman appeared to be going back and forth between some sort of disoriented state and a very real and desperate here-and-now reality. Her voice was light and her eyes looked very tired. Katherine hated to think such a thing but with the way the woman was losing blood, there was no way she was going to last much longer. Biting back a sob of her own, Katherine got to her feet and walked away. The driver mentioned something else about Joe but did not seem to even notice that Katherine had left. She could hear the woman sighing, her breath now labored and rushed.
Go back and help her you coward, she told herself. Yes, she’s going to die, but you can be there when she goes. You can—
No sooner had Katherine turned away than another voice called out. This one was further down the road, towards Brandermill. It was a male voice and it sounded coherent and scared.
“Hey! Are you okay? Can you help?”
It took Katherine a moment to understand that the man was speaking directly to her. She peered ahead and saw a figure standing in front of a three car collision. He was looking to her and then back to one of the cars, and then back to her again. From this distance, he looked almost like he was working on some automatic spring.
She hurried over to him, passing an overturned truck and a tractor trailer that seemed to have come to a skidding halt. The trailer had come unhitched from the back of the truck and sat partially askew. In an odd way, she thought it might all be easier to digest if everything was in flames or in ruins. Something about the stillness of it all was unnerving.
As she neared the man and the three wrecked cars, a phantom voice invaded her mind. The voice belonged to Section Chief Rollins and it tried to pry open a question that she had not yet considered.
“There were explosions. We had a few agents find a—”
He’d made that call before the nuclear blast. She figured he’d probably made the call anywhere between one and three minutes after the explosions, just to notify them. But what explosions? Had there been a chain of smaller ones before the nuke detonated? What did it mean if—
She’d reached the panicked man and his urgent voice interrupted her thoughts. “Oh, thank you so much,” the man said as she came to the accident. “My wife and son are in there and I can’t get them out.”
She took in the scene as she listened to him. She noticed several things about him that told her all she needed to know. The man had a large gash down the side of his right arm. That very same arm was also bent awkwardly below the elbow, the hand dangling uselessly. It appeared that it was badly broken.
The vehicles involved in the accident were a small van and two cars. Katherine could clearly see through the shattered windshield of the first car that the driver was dead; her head had been crushed between the road and the crumpled hood of the car. Katherine felt very fortunate that the hood kept the result of the impact hidden. The other car had only one person in it as well, and they were currently sitting almost comfortably in th
e driver’s seat, not moving. As for the van, the driver’s seat was empty and there was a very soft sobbing noise coming from inside.
Katherine gave the man with the broken arm a cursory glance as she peered into the van. It had been hit from the side by the car with the now-headless driver. The van had slammed into the back of the other car, turning them both in a quarter circle. This had blocked the passenger side door, making it impossible for the woman in the driver’s seat to open it.
“Why can’t she just come out of the driver’s seat?” Katherine asked.
“My son’s in the back,” the man said. “He’s only six. He’s terrified. If she moves, trying to get out, he freaks out.”
Katherine, who had never been the best with kids, didn’t see the issue. Get the wife out of the car and deal with the screaming kid afterwards. Still, she figured if she was going to help, she should be somewhat kind-hearted about it. She walked over to the passenger side to get a better look at the second car. The man followed behind her and started to talk. Katherine felt awful but by the third word, she really just wished he’d shut up.
“You have any idea what happened?” he asked. “It was nuclear, right?”
“Seems like it,” Katherine said. “I’m far from an expert, but…yeah, I think so.”
He uttered a string of curses as Katherine approached the passenger side door. Her original assumption had been wrong. The other car had not pinned her in. It had simply struck the door right along the frame, denting it and causing it to buckle. It would have been pretty much impossible for a man with a broken arm to open it. Katherine did her best, pulling at the door handle and was barely able to get it to budge.
She looked into the van at the woman—presumably the cursing man’s wife—and locked eyes with her. “Roll the window down,” Katherine hollered.
The woman did as asked. Katherine grabbed the door along the window frame with one hand, pulling it as she also pulled the handle. “Can you bang it hard with your shoulder?” Katherine asked.
The woman nodded quickly and reared back to do just that. When she did, the kid in the back started to scream. It was a sound that tore right through Katherine’s brain and reminded her why she’d never been interested in having kids. Still…to be a kid and go through this had to be tough.
With Katherine’s tugging and the woman’s jolt, the door came open with a metallic shriek. The woman turned immediately toward the boy in the back. He had started to cry, but the woman’s voice remained calm.
“It’s okay. I can get out now. Do you think you can undo your seatbelt for me?”
“No Momma…I don’t wanna move…”
Katherine angled her head a bit, peering through the opened window to better see the boy. He looked like he’d seen a ghost, his eyes wide and his skin pale. She wasn’t sure she’d ever seen someone so scared. But he was looking directly at his mother, reaching out for her.
“Daddy’s right outside,” the mother said. “He’s waiting for us and we—”
Katherine stopped listening when she heard the father utter another curse. This one was loud and angry. She turned to see what was wrong and saw that he was leaning against the back of the van as if he were very tired.
“Sir? You okay?” she asked.
“Don’t know. All of this…all of this is…I feel sick and I’m trying to tell myself I’m not. I mean, that virus isn’t even here yet, right?”
“Last I heard,” she said. “I’m with the FBI and as of this morning, no…there had been no signs of the virus in Richmond. For now, we need to worry with your arm. I’m sure you’re just rattled from the blast. Your body is just processing it all.”
Before he could say anything, his son screamed from inside the car. Katherine turned back to the passenger side and saw that the mother was now out of the van and opening up the side door. The kid’s screams intensified, growing louder with the door open, and Katherine swallowed down the irrational urge to slap the kid across the face.
Maybe the blast rattled you, too, she thought to herself. Get a grip. Help this family and—
Behind her, the father fell hard against the van. She thought he had fainted, his head slamming into the van and then his entire body collapsing to the ground. Katherine wondered if he’d perhaps hit his head in the accident and had managed to soldier on until his family was saved, waiting to show weakness at the last moment. Katherine started rushing for him but then the mother and the son were both out of the van.
“He looks fine, right?” the mother asked, bringing the boy close to her. He was still screaming but it was mostly muffled as he turned into his mother’s shoulder. “Right?”
Katherine didn’t bother arguing that she was a federal agent, not a doctor. She looked the kid over and nodded. “Looks fine. Just startled and scared. Which I think is reasonable.”
It was then that the wife saw her husband on the ground. She gasped and, with her son still clutched tightly to her, ran to his side. “Barret, are you okay?” she asked, her voice breaking and quickly descending from fright to absolute panic.
“Get away,” he yelled. “Dizzy. Feel like I’m gonna puke. I’ve got the thing from the news….that virus.”
“There’s no way that’s true,” Katherine said as she approached. “Like I told you, it hasn’t come this far south yet. And even if it had, it wouldn’t affect you so quickly. You’d be—”
The husband—Barret, according to the now terrified wife—coughed. It was a dry sound at first but by the end of the second cough it was very wet. It also sounded strangled, as he vomited on the road. The logical side of Katherine’s mind told her this could absolutely not be the Blood Fire virus. But then her brain bought up the news reports out of the small town of Destiny Ridge, Texas. A bomb had gone off and then, within a few hours, reports of the virus had been reported. The speculation, of course, was that the bomb had been used as a means of unleashing the virus into the atmosphere. She’d learned a lot from those news reports and one tidbit had told her that for an explosive to spread any sort of airborne pathogen, the explosive device would have to be made a specific sort of way. She also learned that a nuclear bomb could not be used to deliver a virus because the intense heat from the blast would annihilate it before it could spread.
And the bomb that had taken out Richmond had without a doubt been nuclear in nature. So there was no way the bomb had spread the virus…right? She honestly had no idea. All she knew had come from the news reports and the reporter and so-called experts and consultants had all seemed just as out of sorts as the public.
The simple fact of the matter was that Barret was crumpled up on the road, puking for a second time. And no more than thirty seconds ago, he’d been complaining of feeling sick and dizzy. It was pretty easy to jump to a conclusion that made no logical sense.
“Help him,” the wife said, now in hysterics. Katherine watched the way the woman trembled and thought she might drop the still-screaming kid. “Can’t you help him?”
Katherine opened her mouth to say something, but no words came out. She only shook her head and again, for reasons she did not dare dwell on, she found herself reaching for her Glock. The kid continued to scream and wail, the wife continued to plead for help she could not give, and the husband tried to get to his feet but stumbled and fell. He was clutching his stomach and starting to cough again.
Katherine felt something inside of her shift in that moment. It was not the flipping of a switch or the pressing of a button, but an actual shift; it was as if God himself had reached down, grabbed a part of her soul, and gave it a shake, dislodging parts of herself she was just barely familiar with. And she responded to the scene in a way that was very much unlike her—in a way that almost instantly had her hating herself.
Katherine turned away from the family and ran. She ran towards Brandermill, away from the family and away from the mortally wounded woman a few cars back that had told her about Joe’s chili. She passed dozens of other cars and countless dead bodies. A few t
imes, she heard someone muttering or weeping from those cars but as far as she was concerned, they were nothing more than crypts or tombs. She was running through a large graveyard, and each vehicle she passed was a headstone. When she heard a ragged male voice reciting the Lord’s prayer in an almost hypnotic way, Katherine started to cry. It was similar to the crying fit she’d succumbed to in the parking lot of the industrial park. It came from deep within her, perhaps from that place that had shifted.
She felt like a coward, like a disgrace. But she ran. She fought every instinct in her—the kind heart she’d always had and nurtured, as well as the FBI training—and ran. She waited to start feeling sick, to feel a wave of chills and nausea, for that first pull in her stomach. She figured until it came, she would just run. She’d run from the ruins of the city she knew and loved, from the fallout of the bomb that had taken it out, and from the doomed family in the crashed van…a family she assumed would forever haunt her dreams.
That is, if she lived long enough to ever have another one.
Chapter 14
“Time for another blood sample,” Dr. Jolly said. He set his tray down on the edge of Paul’s cot and picked up his little blood-taking implements.
“Not today,” Paul said. He was sitting on the edge of the bed, his arms crossed. He glared at Jolly with as much determination as he could muster. It was his second day at the little camp outside of Batesville, Ohio and so far all he had to show for his stay was a bruised chest, courtesy of the butt of Hinkley’s rifle.
“Oh, come on, now, Paul,” Jolly said. “There’s no need to be difficult.”
“I’m not being difficult,” Paul said. “I’m just tired of being poked and prodded. I’ve been here for nearly twenty hours now, and you’ve taken my blood twice. That was me being a nice guy, wanting to be a team player. But that stops right now.”
